Cogeneration & Trigeneration – How to Produce Energy Efficiently

Energy efficiency is an increasingly important contributor to climate change mitigation while at the same time reducing the cost of energy as well as presenting an opportunity for technological innovation. Cogeneration (or ‘cogen’ for short) is in many cases one of the low hanging fruits of energy efficiency, and also has benefits on the electricity supply side. Cogeneration – the combined production of heat and power (also known as CHP) – encompasses all concepts and technologies by which heat and power are jointly generated in one unit and used by the same consumer, with the option of excess energy being fed into the public grid. The high levels of efficiency achieved in this process result from using waste heat as a co-product of electricity generation. Taking this one step further to include the generation of cooling energy from waste heat is called trigeneration (or ‘trigen’ for short) or combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP).